City Bulldozes the Wrong Home — Twice!

City Bulldozes the Wrong Home — Twice!

Fort Worth, Texas, is making headlines again for contractors who mistakenly demolished the wrong house — and the same thing happened to another home just one day prior.

The city has stopped demolitions until it determines why two incorrect homes were bulldozed and how they can help the home owners affected by the mistaken demolitions.

In the most recent incident, a wrecking crew was sent out to bulldoze an abandoned home, but instead tore down a lakeside home nearby that was vacant. City officials say the home was “inappropriately” marked for demolition by a city employee. The home owners say they had planned to make the vacant lakeside home their retirement home one day.

City officials also learned that the day before the same crew had torn down an undamaged residence that was at the same address of a fire-damaged home that was to be leveled.

The city also currently faces a lawsuit over a commercial property that was demolished in 2011, which the property owners allege was a mistake and crews were to have demolished a property next door instead.

Cases of mistaken identity on homes has happened before in bulldozing incidents across the country. For example, in Detroit, a dozen homes were leveled shortly after they had been sold at auction in late 2012. The state said the homes were unsuitable to occupy and never should have been sold, but the home owners who had just purchased the homes in the auction allege state officials had made a big mistake.